


Gone Fishing

by Unpretty



Series: Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts [37]
Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 09:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14590092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpretty/pseuds/Unpretty
Summary: A very normal vacation with friends.





	Gone Fishing

The sign under the register said:

**CASH OR CHECKS ONLY  
NO LARGE BILLS 50+**

Bruce stared at it. "Shit."

Clark snorted, and started to make a joke about buying a pack of gum with a hundred dollar bill. Then he remembered who he was with. "Wait, are you—" 

"It's fine," Bruce said before Clark could finish asking. "Excuse me," he said to the woman behind the register. Her hair was the approximate color and consistency of straw. She had somehow conspired to form her bangs into a sort of tumbleweed above her forehead. Her pants were a distinctly visible shade of a pink camouflage print. Bruce held up a pack of gum. "I don't suppose I could get this on store credit?" 

She scoffed. She was chewing nicotine gum actively and open-mouthed. It was impossible to say if she didn't know how to chew it properly, or just didn't care. "Store credit's for locals that I know are good for it," she said. "No offense, but I don't know you from Adam."

Bruce could hear, over the chewing, the shaky breath of Clark trying to laugh silently. 

"That's understandable," Bruce said mildly. 

"I'm getting stuff anyway," Clark said. "Throw it in with mine."

"I can write a—" 

"You're not writing a check for a dollar." Clark took the gum from Bruce's hand before he could stop him. As usual, he did not care that powers were cheating. He did that _thing_ where he used his shoulder to hide the unnatural speed of his hand from any possible audience. 

Bruce didn't even _want_ gum. He was only buying it because of the other sign, the one that declared the bathroom was for paying customers only. "Where's your bathroom?" he asked, the ramshackle wooden building seeming too small to hide such a thing. 

"Outside, take a right," she said, reaching beneath the counter as she entered prices into the register. She tossed him the key, attached to a piece of driftwood whittled in the shape of a gun. 

Clark said nothing. It was a very meaningful nothing. 

"You didn't have to do that," Bruce said as they stepped back outside, past the bushels of deer corn. 

"But I did," Clark said cheerfully, offering Bruce his gum. 

"Hey!" the cashier called from the doorway, and both men stopped and turned. She held up a tabloid, and pointed at it. "This you?" 

Bruce Wayne was on the cover, a classic paparazzi shot of a hotel balcony. He was on his phone, and had an expression of utmost exhausted disdain. 

"No," Bruce said.

"This says you're supposed to be a billionaire," the cashier said, ignoring him to bring the tabloid down and squint at it. "But you couldn't even afford a pack of gum."

Clark and Bruce exchanged the look of two men both trying not to look at each other while wanting to check and see what their expressions were. It was fleeting and confirmed all their suspicions. 

"I'm always telling Jodie these things are fake," she said, self-satisfied. "Just wait until she hears about _this_." With a grin, she disappeared back into the gas station. 

Clark opened his mouth to say something. 

Bruce snatched the pack of gum from his hand, and stalked wordlessly around the building. 

Clark hadn't even finished pumping gas when Bruce got back in the car, sitting stiff in the passenger seat.

"That was fast," Clark observed when he was done, buckling his seatbelt. 

Bruce looked at the seatbelt. He looked at Kal-El. He said nothing as Clark started the car. 

"That bad, huh?" Clark asked. 

"I don't want to talk about it," Bruce said. 

"I'd have thought the Dark Knight would be made of sterner stuff." Clark took his time pulling out onto the interstate, staying always a careful three miles higher than the speed limit. Other cars were rare, but consistently passed him rather than slow down. 

"There was a hole in the wall instead of a mirror."

"I've seen worse."

"It was full of spiders."

"There aren't many venomous spiders around here."

"There were so many they looked like insulation."

"Huh."

"The seat was rusty."

"Are you sure it was rust?" 

"No."

They passed a billboard for a fifties diner which may have once been a modern diner. 

"On the bright side," Clark said, "I don't think you two have any mutual friends for her to tell about this."

"Enemies, maybe."

"She wasn't _that_ bad."

"She's my nemesis now," Bruce said. 

"I thought that was the Joker."

"No."

"Do you think it hurts him every time you say that? He feels hurt suddenly and doesn't know why?" 

"Yes," Bruce said. He pointed at a horse grazing in a field. "That's also my nemesis." 

"You're just in a mood because you don't carry ones like a normal person."

"Why would I ever need ones."

"Strip clubs?" Clark suggested, clearly only saying it to say it and with no positive expectations. 

Bruce looked at Clark. Clark looked at Bruce. Clark looked back to the road. 

"I'm aware you don't go to strip clubs," Clark said. 

"I do," Bruce corrected. "I just don't bring ones."

"… fair." They passed a barn with **JESUS SAVES** painted in white on the roof. "You must be very popular." 

"Yes." Bruce watched a passing field of corn. "I'm rich."

"Maybe they like your charming personality."

"Hm." They watched the landscape change without changing, corn punctuated with cows. "Clark, what are we doing?" 

"Fishing?" he said, a touch hopefully. 

"Why."

"I told you why."

Luthor had this new game: large-scale charitable projects. Superman knew that Luthor always had an angle, and Luthor knew that Superman knew—

It wasn't the first time. But Clark didn't trust himself not to take the bait, not when the risks were so high. Knowing he was being fucked with didn't stop him from being fucked with. 

So Lois and Kara sent him out of town. If it were a real problem, they could always call him home. In the meantime, no risk of Clark impulsively smashing something designed to look smashworthy. 

"Why am _I_ here."

"To keep me company?" Clark said. "Because we're friends?" 

Bruce raised a single eyebrow.

"You're very popular," Clark reminded him. 

"Hm."

"Do you want me to pull over?" 

Bruce frowned. "Why."

"There's a river here," Clark explained, clarifying nothing. 

"What."

"Do you still need to go to the bathroom?" 

Bruce looked at Clark with horrified incredulity. "In a _river?_ " 

"Because there's a bridge!" Clark said defensively. "For privacy."

"I'm not a _troll_ ," Bruce said. "Is this what you do? You fly around pissing in the water supply?" 

"It's not anyone's water supply!" Clark insisted. "I thought the running water might—you know what, I'm not explaining to you the finer points of peeing outside." The wheels rumbled over the intermittent grates along the bridge. 

"The fact that I'm here to kill fish is bad enough without pissing on them first to establish dominance."

"Even if there _were_ fish—and I don't think there were—you wouldn't have to _aim_ at them."

"I think it would happen reflexively. The fish is my nemesis."

"You're going to get a bladder infection and you're going to deserve it."

"If I see any scenery worth pissing on, I'll be sure to let you know."

"That won't be necessary."

A crudely made wooden sign came into view in the field beside the road. It had a lot of opinions about what constituted sin and what happened to sinners. 

"I see some scenery," Bruce said. 

"Eyup," Clark agreed, pulling onto the shoulder. 

When Bruce got back in the car, he was already sterilizing his hands. He had somehow managed to hide a utility-belt's worth of preparedness in a pair of tailored linen pants. 

Clark had told him to dress casual, but Bruce's idea of casual was slacks instead of trousers and an untucked shirt.

Bruce's phone buzzed as soon as he got in the car, at the same time as Clark checked his. He looked at his messages.

> **Lois:** How is your totally heterosexual, not at all suspicious fishing trip going?  
>  **Lois:** Have you spooned in a tent yet?

A response came in as Bruce watched.

> **Clark:** not yet but will keep u posted

Clark tossed his phone carelessly into the center console, pulling back into the road.

Bruce looked at his phone. He looked at Clark.

> **Lois:**... he didn't realize this was a group text, did he?  
>  **Bruce:** I don't believe he did. 

Clark glanced at where his phone was buzzing. Then at Bruce's phone, also buzzing. 

Bruce watched Clark's eyebrows. 

"That was a group text," Clark said instead of asked. 

"Yes."

"I knew that."

"Uh-huh."

"I was joking. It was a joke."

"A joke about spooning me."

He was turning pink. "Yes."

"With your girlfriend, who keeps asking me about threesomes."

"That's also a joke."

"No it isn't."

"It's kind of a joke."

"The joke is that she's serious."

Clark was getting flustered. "It isn't—I'm not—"

"It's fine."

Clark didn't seem reassured. 

"I am well aware you're not trying to seduce me."

That was a fun shade of red.

"Would you like me to turn on the radio so we can pretend this never happened."

"It's fine," Clark said, clearly not actually fine. "I just... didn't mean for this to get weird."

"This was never going to not be weird."

"I mean _that kind_ of weird. This was supposed to be a nice friend thing."

"It's still a nice... thing. Friend. Thing."

"It was just nice. That one time. After Lois found out about me."

Bruce kept his face impassive. It may have been _too_ impassive.

"Not—I mean. Just hanging out and drinking and talking about work. Normal stuff."

"You were drinking anti-freeze."

"Mostly normal."

"Hm."

"There aren't really a lot of people I can talk to about 'work'. What we do. There are other people who do this, but none of them know who I am, and the people who know who I am are all... Lois. And relatives. That's not the same. And it was nice. I thought."

Bruce considered the appropriate response to this. "It was." That was not an ideal reply. "Nice," he clarified, in case that was unclear.

Clark sighed. "Thank you for being a good sport."

Bruce didn't know how he felt about this characterization of himself. Or maybe he only didn't know because it was Clark. He _was_ right. They didn't have many peers.

"You could have invited Diana," Bruce said suddenly.

Clark seemed surprised. "I thought that would make things weird."

"Why."

"… you two?"

There was an irony here that Bruce thought might be lost on Clark. It was hard to tell. Clark was too sincere to seem sincere at the best of times. "It wouldn't have to be weird."

"I don't think it would be the same," Clark said. "Besides, aren't you glad she didn't see what happened with your new nemesis?"

"No."

"No?"

"She would have defended my honor."

Clark started to laugh. "What, like challenge her to a duel?"

"Maybe."

"Why didn't you defend your _own_ honor?"

"Ask Lois what the headlines would look like."

"God, she comes up with the best headlines," Clark said, briefly distracted by how smitten he was. Had always been. Could still be distracted by. 

"She does," Bruce agreed. 

"I don't think Diana would come across much better if she punched a cashier."

"The cashier would thank her," Bruce said, and Clark laughed again.

"Do you have a lot of fantasies about Diana punching people you're not allowed to?" he teased.

"Do you not?" Bruce countered, and that brought him up short.

"... it would just be _really_ satisfying," Clark admitted. He was clearly imagining Wonder Woman's fist in Luthor's face.

"It would," Bruce agreed. "How far is this place."

"I'm not sure," Clark said, lowering his glasses to consider the horizon. "The guy said there'd be a lot of trees, we'll pass an old park, and then it's going to be on the right."

"Have you not been here before."

"No, I thought it would be more fair this way."

"What."

"Instead of taking you somewhere that I know where you're out of your element, this way it's new to both of us."

"You thought I would be more comfortable if we were _both_ unfamiliar with our surroundings," Bruce said for clarification.

"In retrospect, I can see where I may have assumed incorrectly."

"You may have."

"I've seen pictures!" Clark assured him. "Dad's been here before, he says it's nice."

"This is the beginning of a horror movie."

"It isn't!"

"If I see a man with a chainsaw I'm going home."

"You can't just retreat at the first sign of lumberjacks."

"I can. I will. And I have."

  


* * *

  


"I'm going home."

"There is not a _single_ lumberjack within miles of here," Clark protested, dropping his bags on the floor of the cabin. "I checked."

"The only running water is _outside_ ," Bruce said, setting his bags down more carefully.

"I'm sure you've dealt with worse," Clark said, and Bruce didn't contradict him.

Jungles, deserts, swamps, slums, oil rigs. No one who knew him. Alone. Sections of his life compartmentalized into different people. The awkward position of not knowing who to be when nothing was expected but to be himself.

"There's only one bed," Bruce pointed out.

"Well, yeah."

Bruce raised an eyebrow.

"I'm going to be on the roof," Clark clarified, pointing with his thumb. "Slightly above the roof," he corrected. "Sort of... floating—look, I don't have to explain my sleep habits to you. I'm on vacation."

"That sounds cold." Summer nights could be warm, but there were limits.

"I don't get cold," Clark reminded him, pulling a thin blanket from one of his bags.

Bruce looked at the blanket. So did Clark.

"I can't sleep without a blanket," Clark said. "Or, I _can_ , but I don't want to. I'm allowed to want to feel safe."

"From what."

"… ghosts?"

"I don't think that's how ghosts work."

"Ghosts can't pass through bedding," Clark insisted. "It's a rule."

"That's not a rule."

"That's why they're always under sheets. They're trapped. Ghost rules."

"Nothing about that sounds right."

"You know what's not right?" Clark asked, balling up the blanket and holding it against his chest. "The _lingering souls of the dead_."

  


* * *

  


Bruce had started and subsequently finished a book on the presidency of Chester A. Arthur before he accepted that he couldn't sleep. 

> **6625211850:** How are things going?  
>  **FineMess:** Everything's a-okay out here, Boss!  
>  **FineMess:** How's camping?  
>  **6625211850:** Good. 

  


> **6625211850:** How are things going?  
>  **HypatiaLives:** It's a train wreck, but it isn't any worse than one of yours  
>  **HypatiaLives:** Go to bed, sleep in, enjoy your time off whether you like it or not

The moon and the stars were too bright in the sky. The night was noisy with crickets and frog song. _Lithobates clamitans melanota_ , mostly. The occasional _Pseudacris triseriata_. There was a mourning dove somewhere doing its best impression of an owl.

Loud. The wrong kind of loud. The city was white noise by now, and he didn't hear it. There were woods around the mansion, but they weren't alive like this. Not now. Maybe when he'd been young.

He had not realized for many years that it was a constant problem, people dropping off stray cats in what they thought of as the wild. His parents, his grandparents, they'd made a job of it. Collecting strays and taking them into the shelter.

He hoped that was what they'd done with them.

It had never been Alfred's job. It had never occurred to Bruce that it was a job that needed doing. Their woods were a colony of cats, now. He couldn't bring himself to clear them out properly.

It was hell on the bird population.

Maybe one of these days he'd ask Selina if she could do something about it.

The grass was wet under his bare feet. He'd only worn pants to bed; the air wasn't cool enough to feel refreshing against his skin. He hadn't thought he'd feel self-conscious, practically alone like this.

He glanced up toward the sky, above the cabin. The shape of Clark floated in the air, the blanket hanging down from him. He was sitting upright, and waved. Bruce tilted his head in something like a nod.

"Can't sleep?" Clark asked, sounding like he was on Bruce's shoulder.

"Don't do that," Bruce said, at a normal volume.

Ventriloquism was creepy at the best of times.

He could see Clark shrug.

Clark was still floating when Bruce pulled himself up onto the roof. "I assume you don't mind," Bruce said.

"You're good," Clark said, before yawning. "I don't actually sleep that much."

"Of course you don't," Bruce said, and Clark snorted. "I try to stick to a schedule."

"How's that working out for you?"

"Not well." Bruce yawned. "It's not so bad at home," he said. "Routine. Gets disrupted and it fucks up my whole... nap schedule." Clark started to laugh. "Have you ever tried to maintain a fucking _nap schedule_. Excusing yourself after lunch because it's time for your _scheduled nap_. That's the real reason everyone thinks I'm depressed, the constant excusing myself for naps."

Clark was still laughing. "That, and all the black."

"Hm."

"And the moping."

"I don't mope."

"And the angst."

"I don't angst."

"All the brooding."

"I do not _brood_."

"Based on the number of birds you've raised, you must."

Bruce groaned audibly, and Clark started to laugh again, a quiet and giggly thing. The mild hysteria of someone who should have been sleeping.

"Of all the ways to make yourself laugh," Bruce said.

"Sorry," Clark said, not sorry at all, rubbing at the corners of his eyes. "I wasn't laughing at that, it was..." He trailed off into giggles again. The corner of Bruce's mouth twitched. "Silkies," he said, as if that were an explanation. "With the little..." He brought his fingers to his eyes to make a mask of them.

Bruce's mouth twitched again, and his nose twitched with it. Looking out at the forest instead of at Clark, he bent his arms, brought his hands close to his shoulders. Deliberately pitching his voice low, he said: "Bawk."

He gave his 'wings' a single flap for effect.

Clark was immediately undone, pulling the blanket up over his head and shaking with laughter high-pitched enough to be inaudible.

Bruce buried his face in his knees and made a sound like a water balloon full of pudding landing on a frog.

This did not at all improve the situation for Clark, who struggled to breathe.

"We're in our thirties," Bruce managed, muffled.

"You have kids," Clark agreed, blanket still over his head.

"You almost won a fucking Pulitzer."

Clark seemed to have recovered, silent and catching his breath. Then he moved his arms a little under the blanket, and said: "Bawk."

The conversation lost cohesion again.

"Thank god someone had this blanket on hand to catch this chicken's ghost," Bruce said.

"Chicken ghosts would be the _worst_ ," Clark said with startling vehemence, distracted from his own amusement by the horror this concept represented.

"How do you know chickens don't have ghosts?"

Clark pulled the blanket down off his head. "I definitely would have met one by now," he said. "I lived on a _farm_ ," he added at the look on Bruce's face.

"I thought you grew corn."

"We didn't _just_ grow corn. We grew a lot of things. There were chickens, and goats. Rabbits, for a while. Ma was experimenting with more ethical meat sources."

"Rabbits."

"Yes, rabbits. Don't look at me like that, it isn't worse than cows, I know you eat those."

"No, it's—I know." Bruce scratched his chin, his lips a careful line. "You should tell me about it."

"Tell you about—?"

"The rabbits."

"Oh, _ha_ ," Clark said, as Bruce's hand went higher to cover the curve of his mouth. "That joke doesn't even work," he said, and Bruce had to duck his head as Clark's indignation made it funnier. "You're clearly trying to imply that I'm Lenny, but that's Lenny's line. It's a poorly constructed own."

"You're getting your money's worth out of that English degree."

"It's a _journalism_ degree, you pretentious ass."

Bruce snorted reflexively at the sound of Clark swearing. "I didn't go to Yale to _not_ be a pretentious ass."

"Just for that," Clark said, "the next time you fight the Joker, I'm showing up and I'm standing where only you can see me, and I'm impersonating a chicken."

Bruce swallowed the sound that tried to escape him, and Clark started to giggle again, floating a little higher and then settling down again. "How do you not..." Bruce gestured vaguely upward with his hand.

"Not just keep going up?" Clark asked for clarification, and Bruce nodded. "Iunno," Clark shrugged, and Bruce made a sound of disgust. "It's not like I naturally drift spaceward at all times. I just don't _fall_." He wobbled slightly. "Ugh, let's not talk about this."

"What?"

"It's like thinking about breathing."

" _What?_ "

"You know, like—dangit, now I'm thinking about breathing." He huffed, shaky and petulant. "When you think too much about breathing, and it stops happening automatically. You start having to consciously inhale and exhale." He huffed again, and scowled.

Bruce buried a high-pitched hiccup. "You're a fucking cartoon character," he accused. "You fall when you learn about gravity."

"That isn't how it—I need to sit down." Bruce pressed his fist to his mouth as Clark sank back down to the roof.

"Does Lex know your weakness is a heavy hardcover with the word 'gravity' printed on the front?"

Clark started laughing harder than the joke warranted. "God _damn_ it," he said, as Bruce buried the lower half of his face in his elbows, resting on his knees. Clark pulled the blanket higher again, not entirely over his face. "I'm imagining the worst fight," he admitted.

"Hawkman and a mirror."

"No, I said worst. You, standing there reading a physics textbook like it's a wizard's scroll—"

Bruce choked.

"—and meanwhile I'm flapping my arms like a chicken, _bawk bawk bawk_."

"There's no way we're going to get enough sleep," Bruce said when he caught his breath. "When are we fishing, again?"

Clark squinted at the sky. "Three hours from now?" he suggested.

"God." Bruce rubbed at his eyes. "My nap schedule is fucked," he said, making Clark laugh again. "I should get to bed." He stood up, brushing himself off. "If I don't see you out here in three hours, I'll assume you're in the mesosphere."

"If I don't see you I'll assume you saw a lumberjack. Or a lumberjack saw _you_."

"Don't make this weird," Bruce said, jumping off the roof.

"We both know it's too late for that."


End file.
